He tried once, but security stopped him and said he could be charged with trespassing if he came again. He was grateful for the intervention. 

Then in April 2022, Ontario launched its regulated market of virtual casinos and sports books, allowing residents to legally gamble any time and from anywhere. Bhatt figured his province-wide casino ban would extend online since the provincial government was overseeing the new market.

He soon discovered that was not the case. After Bhatt was tempted by a promotional email from BetMGM announcing their entry into Ontario, he made his first online bet.

That marked the beginning of a devastating relapse. Over the next 10 months Bhatt says he gambled and lost nearly $134,000, all from provincially licensed gambling websites.

“My four clean years came to an end,” he said.

At the same time, calls to the province’s problem gambling helpline have shot up in the last two years, leading to appeals for stricter regulations and more protections for problem gamblers. 

In its rush to legalize online betting, the government entrusted its system of self-exclusion to operators of individual gambling websites. That was a mistake, addiction experts say, because it left problem gamblers to fend for themselves amid an onslaught of advertising and aggressive promotion.

There is currently no way to self-exclude from all of Ontario’s 82 online casinos and sports books at one time, like there is for land-based casinos. If someone wants to self-exclude from the entire online market, they have to create an account with each website and go through the self-exclusion process dozens of times — all while resisting the urge to gamble.

Some sites even require a user to deposit money into their account before they can self-exclude.

“It’s too much,” said Nigel Turner, a leading gambling researcher at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). “People shouldn’t have to do that much in order to protect themselves from gambling.”

Turner and others question why the province launched its online gambling market before a centralized self-exclusion system could be put into place, and why it didn’t automatically exclude the more than 32,000 people who have self-excluded from land-based casinos and OLG.ca. If the province had done that, Bhatt says he wouldn’t have relapsed.

Karin Schnarr, CEO for the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), and iGaming Ontario’s executive director Martha Otton declined to be interviewed for this story. 

A spokesperson for iGaming Ontario said before the province regulated online gambling, “grey market operators dominated the marketplace,” and there were no requirements whatsoever around player protection or responsible gambling. 

“This would still be the case today had we waited for the completion of the centralized self-exclusion system.”

By first establishing the regulated market, the spokesperson said, “we have been able to offer greater protections for Ontarians over the past two-plus years while putting in the due diligence needed to develop a robust centralized self-exclusion system that will benefit Ontarians for years to come.”

On Aug. 1, iGaming Ontario announced it had selected a vendor to build a centralized self-exclusion system, something the agency has promised to deliver since it launched. There is no timeline for when the centralized system will be implemented.

The agency also noted that it requires all of its licensed online casino operators to dedicate a portion of their revenue to advertising about problem gambling prevention and responsible gambling, and that every operator has complied.

“iGaming Ontario is committed to continuously reviewing our policies, procedures, and programs to ensure that we remain a leader in responsible gambling,” the spokesperson said.

While the province works toward implementing a centralized self-exclusion system, Bhatt said, people like him will continue to struggle.

“It’s a little too late.”

After suffering his relapse in the spring of 2022, Bhatt self-excluded from BetMGM’s Ontario website. But he occasionally still received promotional emails.

“Free chips up for grabs!” reads one email sent to Bhatt from MGM Slots Live, a mobile app game run by a partner of BetMGM.

He wasn’t able to bet on BetMGM’s website, but he said the email caused him to search iGaming Ontario’s website for other sites where he could, which led to more losses. He would then self-exclude from those sites. But he continued to receive promotional emails, which caused him to seek out other websites, where he gambled and lost more. 

The self-exclusion processes and time frames also differed from company to company. In some cases he could only self-exclude a couple months at a time, as was the case with Bally Bet, which Bhatt says required him to contact customer support if he wanted to self-exclude for a longer time frame. 

When his two-month self-exclusion period ended, the company emailed to let him know.

“Welcome back to Bally Bet,” reads the subject line.

Bhatt immediately resumed gambling on the website and in just a few days racked up almost $20,000 in losses before self-excluding again.

“I just felt defeated,” he said.

BetMGM Canada and Bally’s Canada did not respond to questions. 

Bhatt is now suing the AGCO and iGaming Ontario, accusing the government agencies of negligence. His is one of at least two lawsuits filed in the past year against the province’s gambling regulators alleging insufficient protections for problem gamblers. 

A Hamilton woman who, like Bhatt, had previously signed up for self-exclusion from land-based casinos, says she became addicted to online gambling and lost more than $1 million — much of it taken from a joint bank account she had with her late mother, for whom she had power of attorney.

The woman’s lawsuit alleges the government agencies and gambling companies “failed to have a reasonable system in place to identify problem gamblers and exclude them from continued online gaming.”

She alleges that she was “targeted” with individualized marketing and incentives, and that despite belonging to a loyalty program that tracked her gambling, online casino operators “failed to intervene to prevent losses and further encouraged her to gamble more.”

The woman’s lawyer declined interview requests.

Among the 13 online casino operators named as defendants is NorthStar Gaming Inc., in which Toronto Star owner and publisher Jordan Bitove owns a minority stake. NorthStar Gaming has filed notice of its intent to defend against the lawsuit, but it has not filed a statement of defence. The company did not respond to questions.

Both lawsuits specifically highlight the lack of a centralized self-exclusion system. 

The AGCO and iGaming Ontario said they could not comment on any of the allegations in either lawsuit. Both agencies have indicated in court filings they intend to defend themselves against the lawsuits, but they have not yet filed statements of defence.

An iGaming official said that other jurisdictions, such as Australia, Spain and the U.K., also introduced their centralized self-exclusion systems after launching.

In an email, an AGCO spokesperson said the agency is “hyper-focused on ensuring the gambling products offered in the province meet the highest standards of player protection and responsible gaming safeguards.”

The spokesperson said Ontario has among the strictest regulations in North America and is the only jurisdiction on the continent that requires operators to proactively monitor players’ betting patterns and “appropriately intervene to assist players at risk.”

Eventually Bhatt decided he needed to self-exclude from every gambling website licensed by the province if he had any hope of regaining control of his addiction. He asked his wife to sit with him throughout the hours-long process because he said he couldn’t trust himself. 

“She’s the only person that I think I would potentially change for.”

Requiring problem gamblers to self-exclude from every individual website is a recipe for relapsing, said Daniela Lobo, a psychiatrist at CAMH who studies and treats gambling addiction.

When someone is starting treatment for gambling addiction, she said, it’s important to decrease exposure to potential triggers. But in order to self-exclude from a gambling website in Ontario you’re “bombarded” with opportunities and invitations to gamble before you can navigate to the self-exclusion section of the website. 

Lobo likened it to when OLG first launched its self-exclusion program for land-based casinos 20 years ago. Today you can easily sign up online or by phone, but when the program started you had to go to a casino in person. 

“More often than not people would relapse,” she said, adding that she and others worked with OLG to allow individuals to self-exclude at CAMH instead. 

Now, she says, the government is making the same mistake all over again.

“It’s not like they didn’t know.”

 Critics of the government agree a regulated gambling market is far better than an unregulated one.

“If you try to pretend it doesn’t exist, organized crime will run it,” said CAMH’s Turner, adding that a regulated market ensures responsible gambling tools and support are available.

But there are trade-offs, he said. With the launch of the regulated market came a flood of advertising, which enticed many people to gamble who otherwise wouldn’t, either because they weren’t exposed to it, weren’t comfortable using unregulated websites, or did not want to go to a casino.

One of those people is Isaac, who started betting on sports after iGaming launched. He said he got hooked by bonus-laden welcome offers and referrals from friends. The first website he signed on to was Bet365, which, like many online sports books, offered cash credits for a small first bet. 

“I guess it was the social pressure from my peers and the fact that it was so easily accessible,” he said.

Earlier this year, Isaac, who asked that we not publish his last name because of the stigma associated with gambling addiction, decided he needed to stop gambling. His losses weren’t huge — about $1,500, he estimates — but he didn’t like what the habit was doing to his life. 

He found he was more distracted and sleep-deprived. Even when he won he had trouble sleeping, and sometimes he missed work because he was depressed or overtired. 

His attempts to quit on willpower alone were unsuccessful, and after another sleepless night chasing losses he turned to self-exclusion in June. Like Bhatt, Isaac said he was daunted when he realized he had to create an account with every operator to self-exclude from them, but he was determined to get through them all.   

He says he spent five or six hours that day, but more websites have since popped up. Meanwhile, he’s still inundated with gambling ads every time he goes online. 

“It just seems like there’s no way to get out of this cycle.”

Calls and texts to the province’s problem gambling helpline related to online gambling have dramatically increased since iGaming Ontario launched in 2022, according to data provided by ConnexOntario. There were an average of 35 calls per month in the six months before online gambling was legalized. In the first six months of this year, the average number of monthly calls was 228.

The AGCO and iGaming Ontario did not directly answer a question about whether they believe the increase in calls indicates a rise in problem gambling in the province. The increase “very likely has several causes,” iGaming said in its statement, citing greater awareness of the helpline as one potential cause. 

While there is no way to precisely measure the extent of problem gambling in a population, an article published in the Journal of Gambling Studies in December by Turner and two other researchers describes helpline data as “likely the best indicator of short-term change in gambling-related crises in the general population.” 

Previous studies have found that only a fraction of those experiencing problems with gambling actually contact help services and typically do so as a last resort.

That means, Turner said, the helpline data more likely underestimates the depth of the problem. 

Star reporters signed up and excluded themselves from all of Ontario’s online gambling operators to better understand the process.

In most cases, self-excluding from a single site was relatively straightforward. But the process was inconsistent and not always easy.

Some sites, including BetMGM, required making a deposit before you could self-exclude. After live-chatting with a customer service representative and explaining we wanted to proactively self-exclude, the deposit requirement was lifted. 

Some operators with multiple websites require you to self-exclude from each of their sites individually, despite being run by the same company. 

In the case of Bally Bet, we could not self-exclude from their website directly and had to send an email to customer support. We didn’t receive a response to that email for more than two weeks, and when we did the company said we had to make our self-exclusion request again via live chat, phone or by sending another email. 

Overall, it took Star reporters more than six hours to exclude themselves from all of Ontario’s gambling websites. It took five minutes to do the same for all the province’s casinos.